Will Long Beach tolerate crime rise?

LONG BEACH - "Wild" Bill, who introduces himself as the mayor of West Long Beach, remembers when crime was high.

He's been in the city all his life, ran track in 1959 for Poly High School, experienced segregation in the city firsthand and watched as frustration over civil rights issues fueled the formation of gangs and many crimes.

"The Westside ain't bad," Bill insists.

He should know, he was in the city when homicide rates in the city topped out over 100 per year regularly in the 1980s and the 1990s.

Ten or more years ago, if you asked someone to name a bad neighborhood here, you would probably hear Downtown, North Long Beach, West Long Beach and areas such as the Anaheim Street and Pacific Coast Highway corridors.

Today, it's not as simple as drawing a line around a section of town. It's more like drawing a line around a handful of blocks, or even a single residence or business.

Though Long Beach's crime hot spots are much smaller than in previous decades, they can still create problems for the community and the city as a whole.

Take last year's crime statistics.

The city saw increases in crime across the board, with an overall 9.4 percent increase in Part 1 crimes that included a 2.2 percent increase in aggravated assaults, a 9.9 percent increase in robberies and a 10.5percent jump in property crimes (which include the categories of petty theft, burglary and arson).

This year, so far, the city isn't doing any better, with double-digit increases when compared with the same period last year, police officials say.

Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell is quick to note that the numbers are still below the city's crime average from 10 years ago.

"We were, and still are, at a 40-year record low in many crime categories," McDonnell said, noting murders were down 19.4 percent and rapes dropped by 16.4 percent in 2011.

Nonetheless, McDonnell said, he and his department are well aware and concerned about the increases seen last year and at the start of 2012.

"We serve our neighborhoods as fairly as we can. It's a fairly analytical process. It comes down to things we can measure, such as violent and property crimes, and looking at seasonal trends and patterns and predictive trends," the chief explained. "What's harder to identify and get ahead of is gang activity, which will drive violent crime and property crime in a particular community."

As the city, county and state continue to struggle with budget woes - cuts have been made in every sector of government - trying to get ahead of crime is more important than ever, the chief said.

One of the best ways to do that is to get neighborhoods engaged, officials say. But that can be easier said than done.

Successful communities, be they diverse or homogeneous, rich or poor, share one quality: they engage all members of the neighborhood, and residents and businesses invest in their neighborhoods with money and time.

Proof of that is easily borne out by the city's crime statistics, broken down by hundreds of police reporting districts. Districts with the highest crime rates are characterized by alienated residents and businesses, and most likely don't report many crimes, experts say.

"We probably get at least two shoplifters a day," said Marlene Trujillo, who works at the 99 Cents retail store at the corner of Artesia Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue.

The location is on the border of two reporting districts with the highest numbers of residential burglaries and auto thefts in the city, and bordering districts with the highest rates of robbery and commercial burglaries in Long Beach.

Trujillo said the store expects to take a loss from theft.

"Our manager doesn't even call police most of the time," she said. "So (thieves) know it and they just laugh at us, or hit us, if we try to stop them. It's frustrating."

A recent carjacking of a doctor who works at Molina Medical Center, 540 E. Artesia Blvd., left the physician with a broken arm and out of work for several weeks. The incident still haunts many who live and work in the area.

Molina Health Care officials said they took immediate steps to address security concerns, including erecting more lights in the parking lot and hiring a guard to watch over the parking lot, a feature that the neighboring businesses appreciate.

But as long as the other businesses take a lax attitude toward what they might deem minor crime, the potential for more brazen and dangerous crime becomes greater, police and other experts warn.

"There are some neighborhoods where their level of tolerance and the level they will sanction criminal activity is disturbing," said Deputy Police Chief Robert Luna, who oversees all four patrol divisions in the city.

Businesses aren't the only community members that might look the other way in the face of a problem, police and experts say.

Take reporting district No.464 in Central Long Beach, the area from 15th Street to Pacific Coast Highway, and from Junipero to Cherry avenues, which logged the highest number of aggravated assaults citywide last year.

More than half of the residents interviewed in that part of town said they wanted to move from the area and didn't see the point in trying to rectify what they viewed as long-standing problems.

Others noted the area has vastly improved from what it was just five years ago and say they take advantage of resources such as the California Recreation Center and King Park Community Center. But they conceded problems remain, largely due to apathetic and intimidated residents who fail to report crimes.

"There's lots of robberies, I get chased after school all the time," said Poly High School student Jimmy San, 15, of Long Beach.

Another 15-year-old Poly student, who identified herself only by her first name, Sandra, insisted the area was safe - then added her cousin was shot and killed in King Park just a month earlier.

Asked if she thought it was odd that she would be so comfortable at the park where her cousin was killed, she shrugged and smiled.

"I don't think (crime is) better, I think people just don't notice anymore," said Jonathan Barcenas, 23, of Long Beach. "People are so subjected to the violence that they don't even realize it's bad anymore."

Barcenas had just moved back to his neighborhood, not far from Silverado Park, after leaving the city for a few years. His neighborhood is a small, gang-infested section at the north end of West Long Beach that had the highest murder rate, with 3 homicides, within a single Police Department reporting district last year (Reporting District No. 71). While that small district had the most homicides in the city, the West Division logged more homicides than any other division.

Barcenas said he still feels his neighborhood remains one of the most dangerous. Though statistics show the entire city is safer than it was as little as five years ago, Barcenas wasn't the only person in that part of town with a negative image of the area.

Marlon Amizola, 25, said he felt perfectly safe shooting hoops on his own one morning at Silverado Park, but said it wasn't safe for outsiders to walk around the area talking to people.